Part-owner of F1's BAR team, Jerry Forsythe, is set to buy Steve Horne's Tasman Motorsports's CART FedEx Championship team. Forsythe owns his own front-running CART team, sponsored by Player's cigarettes with Canadians Greg Moore and Patrick Carpentier driving Forsythe's pair of Reynard-Mercedes. Forsythe also owns fifteen percent of the new British American Racing F1 team and is a co-owner with Frank Arciero in the recently announced Yuba County Motorplex which is being built in northern California. Forsythe's primary business is Indeck Energy Services, which builds power plants around the world for all kinds of purposes.

Forsythe has been planning to run a separate, second CART team in 1999 with an engine other than a Mercedes, and the suggestion is that Tasman will become that team. Tony Kanaan won this year's CART rookie of the year award driving Tasman's lone Reynard-Honda and will continue with the team next year. Tasman owner Horne has been looking for additional sponsorship to strengthen his team's program for next year and it's said that Forsythe will become at least a part-owner of Tasman and bring his new sponsor, believed to be burger giant McDonald's, to the team. McDonald's sponsors Bill Eliott's NASCAR team but has never sponsored a CART team.

Horne would not confirm any of this. "I can't comment on any of those rumors because I've signed a confidentiality agreement," said Tasman boss Steve Horne. "All I can say is we expect to make an announcement about our future on December 11th."

Horne ran the very successful Truesports CART team between 1982-'92, and started his own Indy Lights team in 1993, winning the Lights championship in 1993 and '94. Tasman moved up to Champ cars in 1995 and won four CART races in 1995 and '96 with Andre Ribeiro and Adrian Fernandez, and also won the 1997 and '98 Indy Lights championships.